Recent Movie Round-Up

[osprey_archer]

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, so I thought I’d write up some quick reviews.

Steel Magnolias. Years ago I watched this on my own, and thought it was so-so. This time I watched it at the Artcraft Theater, where I discovered that this is perhaps the Legally Blonde of the Boomers, because the theater was packed with women of a certain age and their friends. The management clearly hadn’t expected this level of response, and the show started nearly an hour late because of a big back-up in the concession line, but everyone was so hyped to be there it didn’t matter much.

Naturally I enjoyed it a lot more this time around! I find that I usually do enjoy movies more when I see them with other people, whether in a theater or with a friend. And I think it also helped that I’m older now: having seen some of the shit life throws at people, I’m willing to accept a higher level of drama before I start to scoff, “Melodrama.”

I’ve heard the stage play takes place entirely in the beauty shop, and I’d love to see it sometime to see how that shapes the story.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou. My first Coen brothers film. Really enjoyed it! You know I love a Great Depression story, and young George Clooney is fantastic as a vain escaped convict (but can you blame him for vanity when he looks like that?) smooth-talking his way across the southern landscape.

Priscilla. Of course I had to see the latest Sofia Coppola film! (Still haven’t seen On the Rocks, though.) Difficult to review, as Coppola’s films tend to be: aimless, drifting, powered by aesthetics rather than plot (the one exception is The Beguiled, which is powered by both aesthetics and plot; it remains my favorite Coppola film), and yet so absorbing that it’s startling to realize you’ve arrived at the end.

My favorite Coppola aesthetic is “blonde girls in white dresses,” and this one is definitely more “celebrity glam” - of a different decade than The Bling Ring, but the same aesthetic of excess. But no matter which aesthetic she selects, Coppola always commits, and I love that about her. In fact, I’ve realized that commitment to an aesthetic is something I appreciate in film or TV in general, even if the aesthetic is not one that I particularly like (like the Barbie pink aesthetic in the recent Barbie movie): it takes a certain sincerity to commit so hard to anything.

Addams Family Values. Didn’t like this one, because I am an old fuddy-duddy who no longer enjoys murder jokes. Did the original show have this many murder jokes? (Did I ever actually watch the original show? I must have seen a few episodes, because I know the theme song.) I did like the scene where Morticia and Gomez tango their way around a restaurant in a cavern.

Rocky. Another classic that I’d never seen, although we did watch the famous scene where he runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in my high school film lit class. (That was probably one of the most influential classes of my life. I’m still chasing down movies from it.)

Didn’t expect to enjoy this one, but actually I mostly did, although the scene where Rocky takes Adrian out on their first date is super uncomfortable. Have you heard of a boundary, Rocky! (It is 1975. He has not.) But actually they’re pretty cute once they’re together. And I really dug the grungy 1970s aesthetic - it’s so characteristic, and so different from movies in the decades before and after.

Comments

[galadhir]

I wonder if enjoying murder jokes is a young person thing, because I tried to watch Wednesday on TV recently and found that it was just a little sad and in bad taste rather than funny. (I guess Wednesday may not have been intended to be funny, but I felt the same way about the Addams Family, even though I used to enjoy the Munsters when that was out.

[sholio]

I also bounced off Wednesday pretty hard. It's mean-spirited and unfunny. (And I'm pretty sure it *is* supposed to be funny; it just mostly made me find the protagonist deeply unpleasant.) I do wonder if I'd be completely on board with it if I was in the target demographic, though.

[galadhir]

Yeah, exactly - I think I would have found it unpleasant even if I had been a lot younger. Although now that you remind me I think that it was the lack of murder jokes and general nastiness that made me like the Munsters more than the Addams Family in the first place.

[osprey_archer]

I enjoyed The Munsters as a kid, although now I can't remember if there were any murder jokes or just generally ~spooky~ vibes. Might simply be less murdery than the Addams Family?

[galadhir]

No, you're right! I had forgotten that possibly the lack of murder vibes was the reason I preferred the Munsters to the Addams Family in the first place, so probably I was never the target audience at all :)

[asakiyume]

The thing that got us about Wednesday was how it whiplashed between "ha-ha, we're treating murder as a funny joke" and "but not this murder; be terrified and anxious about this one!"

[galadhir]

Oh that's very true - it makes it very hard to keep up the suspension of disbelief when it's also continually undermining it itself.

[snickfic]

O Brother is one of my favorite movies, just for sheer entertainment value. It's so quotable! True Grit is another great Coen brothers watch, though in a different way. The determined teen girl protagonist of that one is wonderful.

[kore]

I still need to see that one! (My dad gave me the book and showed me the first one, it's also great.)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I've heard good things about True Grit! Must see that one someday.

[kore]

LOL oh yes, Steel Magnolias is very eighties and has that eighties female star power -- Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis AND Dolly Parton. And young Julia Roberts and Daryl Hannah! I was just a bit too young (and was also a snobby disaffected wanna-be Goth) for it, but my mom (b. 1930) loved it. Damn, Wiki says that it cost $15M and raked in nearly $90M. ....of course, at the time nobody pointed out that it was written, directed, and produced all by guys. I remember Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes of the Heart from around that period too. Another era.

I remember O Brother mainly for the giant boom in Americana music caused by the soundtrack, which disoriented me because suddenly all these songs my dad had learned as a kid in the 1930s were wildly popular with like the NPR audience! Bzuh. He said they sang I'll Fly Away in church and Big Rock Candy Mountains for fun. I think Mermaid Avenue, the "new" Woody Guthrie album by Wilco and Billy Bragg, came out around then too. I have the DVD of the opening night concert, Down from the Mountain -- it was spectacular. O Sister! The Women's Bluegrass Collection was pretty neat also.

....Rocky is one of those movies that, to paraphrase George W.S. Trow, I cannot view without a necessary protective layer of irony, or it would seep through my brain and kill me. I know it's actually a good movie! But you can't try with all your might to be a snobby disaffected wanna-be Goth without becoming allergic to Hollywood tearjerker-triumph type movies.

[osprey_archer]

I have this theory that there is a women's shadow canon, made up of movies and books that are ignored or even maligned by critics, and yet get passed around by word of mouth - Little Women and Anne of Green Gables were both in the boat in the mid-twentieth century, until feminist literary scholarship forced at least a partial reassessment. Things like Steel Magnolias, Beaches, Legally Blonde, Miss Congeniality, Mean Girls, etc.

There was an early Youtube hit featuring unicorns looking for Big Rock Candy Mountain... I bet the creators were inspired by the song in O Brother Where Art Thou, or possible the song's revival in the wake of the movie.

[kore]

have this theory that there is a women's shadow canon, made up of movies and books that are ignored or even maligned by critics, and yet get passed around by word of mouth - Little Women and Anne of Green Gables were both in the boat in the mid-twentieth century, until feminist literary scholarship forced at least a partial reassessment. Things like Steel Magnolias, Beaches, Legally Blonde, Miss Congeniality, Mean Girls, etc

Yes! Like all the pre-Code movies, which I have learned about from my flist, not really from any film books (and I've read a bunch). Clueless (1995) is one of the first "girly" movies (lol) I remember getting a lot of respect -- and it was an adaptation of Emma, too. 10 Things I Hate About You, Heathers, Ginger Snaps....

[osprey_archer]

1995 Pride and Prejudice. 2005 Pride and Prejudice, which apparently was also a surprise super-smash-sold-out showing at the Artcraft a few years ago, just like Steel Magnolias. Jane Austen novels in general fall in this space, although either I've gotten better at avoiding obnoxious critics who deride Austen as Girl Books for Girls, or the obnoxious critics have realized that the Janeites WILL cut you and therefore save their carping for the privacy of dinner parties.

Similarly, I think Disney princess movies have been getting more respect recently. But definitely when I was a kid, they fell into this space of being widely popular (especially among girls) but culturally derided. Twilight obviously.... I could go on.

[littlerhymes]

Sofia Coppola does always commit to the bit!

There's a stretch in the 80s and 90s where I think the Coen Brothers had a near-unbroken streak of some of my favourite movies ever. O Brother caps it off in 2000. My dad was pretty indifferent to other Coen Brothers movies but loved this soundtrack. (I was incensed that he does not admire Inside Llewyn Davis like I do even though that too is about music that he would love!) Anyway perhaps you would enjoy the Hollywood razzle dazzle of Hail Caesar which is also part-musical and very campy.

[osprey_archer]

I really should see more Coen brothers! Perhaps the Kankan will show a few more. (Although I think they showed this one specifically for the Odyssey connection - they have some sort of agreement where they show movies for classes at a local university, but said movies are also open to the public?)

[oracne]

Rocky is so iconic around here....

[osprey_archer]

Ahaha yes, I expect it would be. Filmmakers should consider this benefit of filming on location tbh! The movie Breaking Away is mostly forgotten by the world at large, but it will always live in Bloomington, where it was set and filmed.

[oracne]

And if there are sequels, the filmmakers come back and spend more money!

[lokifan]

Totally agree about committing to an aesthetic. Commit to the bit, it's magical!

[osprey_archer]

Yes! This is what film is made to do, so revel in it!

[asakiyume]

I loved O Brother Where Art Thou. It had such AMAZING music.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the music choices were fantastic! I love a good period-appropriate soundtrack.

[konstantya]

Late to the party, but my high school put on Steel Magnolias one year, and while I can't say I remember much about it (I was too young to catch the hype when the film came out, and was similarly still too young as a teenager to really appreciate it on a critical level plus, yanno, high school drama productions aren't exactly the pinnacle of good acting, hah), but the whole thing did indeed take place in the beauty parlor, which a part of me recognized as pretty cool, even then.

Coen brothers films are a little hit and miss for me (I think I want to like some of them more than I actually do), but there's no denying that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an absolute delight, and a great retelling of The Odyssey, at that. :D

[osprey_archer]

I do love the idea of a whole play taking place in a beauty parlor! Really leaning into the limitations of the medium - like the way that that limitations of a sonnet or a haiku can paradoxically give an artist more freedom of expression.